Mangirl! Blog Posts

This is review number one hundred and ninety four. This anime is part of the Winter 201 lineup. The anime I’ll be reviewing is called Mangirl! It’s a twelve episode anime that runs for three minutes about four girls creating a manga. The anime had some interesting things to present but the flaws are also […]
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…Well that’s an unfortunate title. Mangirl! charts the comedic journey of a group of young girls as they create a new manga publisher! Or a manga magazine or something like that, I don’t know how the manga industry in Japan works which tells you something about how educational this series actually is about its chosen [...]
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It's still about manga. Really. ...Sort of.
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The plot, what little of it there is, follows a group of women drawn to look like teenagers (if not younger) who are trying to put together a monthly manga magazine. Most of the episodes focus on an aspect of the editor's job in the manga buisness, including things that I hadn't really thought of before, like making sure you have the right typesetting and font for a particular piece or etiquette when supervising a gravure photo shoot (make sure you're not in the reflection of the mirror in the picture).
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There are a decent amount of characters, but the runtime is too short to have them be much more than one-note. Hana is the bumbling, energetic leader, Tsugumi likes food, Ringo has a sharp tounge and is implied the be an otaku, and Aki is the straight man to all of Hana's crazy ideas. We get a little more out of Aki in what is probably my favorite episode, when the group goes to Comiket to advertise the magazine, but the reveal isn't mentioned again. We also briefly see some of the mangaka who work on the magazine, but the mainstay is Shinobu-sensei, whose main character trait is that she can't take care of herself without her assistant. And so it goes.
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I wouldn't have any problems with the lacking characters if the show had continued to focus on the "behind the scenes" of the manga industry, but after the halfway point it starts to feel like it's tried of its own setup. A trip episode, justified by the plausible excuse of seeing famous places in person as reference, feels more like an excuse to show how "cute" the girls are, complete with a hot springs scene. After the first issue comes out, there's an episode about maids for no apparent reason. And I started noticing the pantsu shots (which could've been there all along, but they're easy to spot in the last few episodes).
I have nothing against fanservice, but when the show went almost exclusively in that direction, there wasn't a lot for me to enjoy. Making things a bit worse, at the very end there's a big timeskip where they're already an established magazine, eliminating the possible conversation they could've had about sales or keeping up production. I guess that wasn't considered as "moe" as maid cafes.
Mangirl is pretty harmless as far as short anime go, but there are full series (Bakuman) and OVAs (Animation Runner Kuromi) that cover the same information in a more interesting and less pandering way. If you're into the manga industry aspect, you're better off skipping this and watching one of those instead. However, if you're looking for a light "girls do cute things" with some fanservice and tidbits about the manga industry thrown in, then this isn't a bad way to kill forty minutes.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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The winter anime season has really taken off now with most new series having started, it’s hard to keep track of them all. Luckily “Mangirl!” is only a small addition to one’s watching list considering it has a short running time of only three and a half minutes. Adapting the “まんがーる!” four panel comic strip [...]
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There are a lot of these two minute Flash shows airing this season. Let’s see if any of them don’t completely suck. Boku no Imouto wa “Oosaka Okan” Imouto is from Oosaka. She explains how they name things differently in … Continue reading →
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Definitely too short to cover all of these, but I can do a first impression if it’s all of them. I guess I also watched Inferno Cop, but let’s not talk about that (facepalms galore). Anyway, first off we have Boku no Imouto wa Osaka Okan. Very simple premise of the boy and his interactions [...]
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I’d completely forgotten about the new law in Japan that said that no anime was allowed to have over 5 minute episodes. That’s why Shaft shoved out Nekomonogatari on the very last day of the year. Everything else unfortunately is stuck trying to make a compelling narrative and engaging characters out of a couple of [...]
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Otherwise known as the show with the misleading title.
A/N: Part of Organization Anti-Social Geniuses' Winter 2013 Evaluation
Japanese portmanteaus and their meanings in English aside, this is a cute short in the same vein as Animation Runner Kuromi in that it seems to want to provide a behind-the-scenes perspective of what goes into making a manga magazine while still being accesible to newbies. It does this by making its characters clueless about how to actually run a magazine and paints them with very broad character strokes (the energetic one, the straight man, the glutton, the cute otaku). Their situation and problems are mostly hand-waved away; they magically obtain 15 writers to work in their magazine, and the company that they work in is never explained (what workplace has an "Eating-Out Division"?).
Those problems would be much bigger if this were a full-length episode, but here it feels more like it's just some condensing to fit the time limit. The bulk of episode focused on distribution costs versus revenue, and recruiting artists to get the magazine off the ground. IT's clearly trying for comedy, but I was more interested in the technical aspects they were discussing than the jokes, which mostly fell flat. I'm expecting some interesting tidbits on the industry on this show, and the art style is pretty cute as well (although most of the characters look like young teenagers rather than adults). So far this looks like a harmless way to get a quick anime fix.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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Otherwise known as the show with the misleading title. Japanese portmanteaus and their meanings in English aside, this is a cute short in the same vein as Animation Runner Kuromi in that it seems to want to provide a behind-the-scenes perspective of what goes into making a manga magazine while still being accessible to newbies. [...]
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2013 is on, kicking off with none less than the third installment of the Monogatari-series and the five minute comedies. Nekomonogatari Nekomonogatari takes place prior to the events of Bakemonogatari. I wouldn’t say it’s accessible without watching Bakemono first though, as it seems to assume you already know much of the characters such as Oshino [...]
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Yama no Susume Short Synopsis: Our lead character climbs mountains and is afraid of heights. Again, three minute episodes. If they were actually good, I wouldn’t mind, but this is yet again a moeblob series like the two before it. Although granted, of Puchimas and Mangirl, this one stands out the best: at the least [...]
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“We're going to launch a manga magazine! A team of girls with zero experience in manga editing are off and running toward their dream of creating the biggest manga magazine in Japan! They seem to do nothing but run into problems and failures... But still they're working hard every day!”
The first comment on Crunchyroll's page for ep 1 reads "Be honest, who thought this show was about a transvestite/hermaphrodite?". A damning indictment of what anime fans are conditioned to expect these days, if every I saw one. But no, Mangirl! is a portmanteau of "Manga" and "Girl" - because it's a bout a girl trying to set herself up in the manga business. Think Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, with the BL replaced by unbearable moe cuteness, and angst replaced by questionable hiring techniques.
Works for me. I liked the manga production side of Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, and while Mangirl tackles the subject with a lot more speed (it's another short-form show - three shows into the new season, and I haven't watched a full-length episode yet) and a large dose of frenetic humour. While still managing to impart the rather grim economics that come with setting up a new anthology mag. Who says anime can't be edumacational?
THE GOOD: Short, sharp fun, while still making a point, of sorts.
THE BAD: It's no Poyopoyo...
...but then I'll be saying that about everything. But Mangirl! is off to a great start.
Mangirl! is streamed by Crunchyroll.
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「こちらコミック アース・スター編集部」 (Kochira Komikku a^su . Suta^ Henshuubu)
"This is Comic Earth Star's Editorial Staff"
Mangirl! is a series funny shorts about four female manga editors, with the operative word there being "funny". I found myself chuckling multiple times during this first episode, and they even managed to fit something like story progression into only three minutes! Colour me impressed.
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San Francisco, CA (December 27, 2012) – Crunchyroll, Inc., continues its winter simulcast announcements with the addition of Mangirl!, which is set to broadcast every Wednesday starting on January 2nd at 10:00 am Pacific Time for its premium members. Free members will be able to view one (1) week after initial broadcast on Crunchyroll. More [...]
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According to Comic Natalie, a TV anime adaptation of Tamaoka Kagari’s four-panel manga series, 「Mangirl!」, has been green-lit for production. It is slated to premiere in 2013. Dogakobo will be the studio behind the project. [Source]
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